Metadiscourse markers assist writers of general and academic texts to increase the cohesion and coherence of their writings. The present study attempted to investigate the meta-discourse markers (interactive and interactional meta-discourse and their categories) utilized in the introduction and literature review sections of single-authored and multiple-authored English applied linguistics research articles. To do so, the first 1000 words of each of the introduction and literature review sections of a corpora of 100 research articles were analyzed based on the Hyland’s (2005/a) framework. Frequency and percentage of the interactive and interactional meta-discourse markers and their subcategories were compared in binary comparisons and then chi-square tests were conducted to investigate the probable significant frequency differences of the utilized markers among the examined sections. The findings showed that authors of single and multiple-authored research articles utilized meta-discourse markers into the introduction and literature review sections. However, the frequency of the utilized markers showed a significant difference since interactive markers have been utilized twice more than interactional markers. Therewithal interactive markers were utilized more in the literature review sections of the investigated research articles than the introduction sections. The results also showed that transitions comprised the maximum utilized interactive markers, while endophoric comprised the minimum utilized interactive markers within the examined sections. Besides, the results showed that engagement markers comprised the maximum utilized interactional markers, while attitude markers comprised the minimum utilized interactional markers within the examined sections. Code glosses were the only markers utilized with no significant frequency difference in the introduction and literature review sections of single-authored research articles, while other utilized subcategories showe
